Native American Perspectives: Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions on European American Culture and Religion

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by John Lame Deer

Living in America today, we often
take for granted several things about ourselves, our country, and our
relationship with the land we live on.
This is not a bad thing. It is,
in fact, only human. However, we should
not always limit ourselves to operating within the current of what we are
familiar with and understand. America
itself, even as far back as our forefather’s presence on it, has offered us a
different perspective on the Europeans settler’s presence here. That perspective still exists today, though
it is much more difficult to find it.
The toil in discovering it is, as often happens when investigating to
learn another’s viewpoint, beneficial and revealing.

To start with, let’s
examine the relationship between the existing Native American Cultures that
were here when Europeans first arrived and the subsequent European-American
culture that has developed since their arrival.
Furthermore, even when examining this relationship it becomes crucial to
understand which culture’s point of view you are examining the relationship
from. The vast majority of scholarly and literary works on this subject have
pervasively European/American views. To get outside of this perspective, we
shall turn to Lame Deer, Seeker of
Visions to provide us with a distinctively Native American view point on
both Native American culture and it’s uniquely relationship with White American
culture. In the book, Native American John Lame Deer, member of the Lakota
tribe and co-author, provides us with an insightful glimpse into the life of the
Lakota who he has lived to see forced into assimilation with mainstream America
culture.

The Cover of John Lame Deer's Personal Account of life as a Wild West Lakota! | Source

An examination of this book can
provide us, through an understanding of both specific and general concepts
discussed in the work, an analysis of the relationship of the cultures in
question from the distinctly Native American point of view we have already
established the need for. This point of view shall be examined to understand
the Native American perception of unique and similar aspects of both culture’s
religious beliefs and economic principals. It becomes important to understand
the concepts and opinions expressed in this book are only that of one
individual, not the entire Lakota peoples. This being said, Lame Deer is a very
well informed and experienced holy man in Lakota society and it serves well to
take note that his own people give his words much authority. Therefore, if any personal account could
carry enough significance to make it useful in the enterprise we are herein
engaged, Lame Deer is such an account as shall become apparent from the quotes
and discussion of them below.

As
we first approach the work, we find that throughout the course of the book,
Lame Deer illustrates several aspects of Native American culture with pointed
and often times humorous explanations of why “the white man” does not
understand this or that about the Native American. For example, the Native
American culture Lame Deer describes is filled with simplicity. Lame Deer
states, “I am an Indian. I think about ordinary, common things like this pot,”
(96). This contentment has often times been misunderstood for simple-mindedness
by a mainstream American culture that has become, as Lame Deer sees it, “prisoner[s]
inside all these boxes…white man’s gadgets—boxes, boxes, boxes, and more
boxes—TV sets, radios, washing machines, computers, cars” (101). Lame Deer
disdains the complications of American culture as futility in a way
surprisingly reminiscent of traditional European American disapproval of the apparent
simplicity of Native American culture. This brings to mind another point that
must be noted now, at the beginning: the continued senseless repression and
assimilation Lame Deer, and whole generations of Native Americans experienced
at the hands of the United States government, is a large factor in the shaping
of Native American’s opinion of our culture, whereas the reverse cannot be
said to be true. So, when Lame Deer sees
futility where we see innovation, and where he values simplicity where we
idolize productivity, we can begin to understand a bit more about how complex
this relationship really is.

A Traditional Lame Deer 4th of July Performance

John Lame Deer, the author of the book being discussed in this article. He is Lakota. | Source

Let’s move on to another point to
make this divide more apparent, Lame Deer states that as a Native American,
thinking about simple things like a pot is not a sign of a simplistic mind but
rather the sign of a people whose focus is much more about spiritual and
kinship relationships. As he puts it, “We Indians live in a world of symbols
and images where the spiritual and the commonplace are one. To you symbols are
just words, spoken or written in a book. To us they are part of nature, part of
ourselves…we try to understand [things] not with the head but with the
heart…what to you seems commonplace to us appears wondrous through symbolism”
(96). This difference has never been fully understood by the governing bodies peopled
with European-Americans attempting to make decisions that looked out for the
interests of both Native Americans and the ever-growing white population. How could they, even if they were well
meaning, make good decisions without a firm understanding of the difference
between them and the Native Americans they were making treaties with, etc?

These differences
seem small at first, but they lie near the heart of almost every conflict
between the two cultures in our history.
Surely this alone warrants this closer examination. If Native Culture
sees value and meaning in symbols and items that are often worthless by
America’s Cultural and economic standards, how much more meaningless are things
we hold dear like financial security and private property? The difference is fundamental. Not only this, but as Lame Deer’s words
indicate, this difference is a much bigger deal to their culture than
ours. The reasons for this only seem too
obvious. When one starts to understand
the significance Native Americans place on this difference in juxtaposition to
the ways the United States has tried to force tribes to become “mainstream”, it
becomes possible to understand the underlying bitterness in their perspective as
well as the staggeringly different religious and economic value systems of both
societies in a way that can, perhaps, help make things better..

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This gap between the perspectives
of Native American and mainstream American culture fluctuates as we examine
their predominant religions. The Native Americans do not see the Christianity the
Europeans brought with them as evil. Nor do they blame it for the mistreatment
they have suffered at the hands of its proponents. Lame Deer is not so naïve as
to believe the hearts of the white man are more purely religious as that of
Native American. As he shrewdly states in his book, “The trouble is not with
Christianity, with religion, but with what you have made out of it. You have
turned it upside down. You have made the religion of the protest leader and
hippie Jesus into the religion of missionaries, army padres, Bureau of Indian
Affairs officials. These are two altogether different religions,” (205). Lame
Deer sites many similarities between the Bible and traditional Native
Spirituality. For example, even in sacred Native ceremonies, traditional
symbols have come to represent both “The Virgin Mary, [and] the White Buffalo
Calf Woman” (212). This tolerance and acceptance on the part of Native
Americans is in stark contrast to the non-tolerant religious attitude of
European settlers who first colonized America.
When someone of a different culture can recognize the beauty in our
religion and look past it to see our faults as our own, perhaps we could treat
them with the same respect.

When
comparing religion, however, there are also some not-so-flattering descriptions
given by Lame Deer of the white man’s religion.
Even so, Lame Deer is again, as a person who takes religion seriously, careful
to point out that these details are products of Americans prejudices, not the
teachings of Jesus. As he puts it, “White people need a church house, a
preacher and a pipe organ…there are so many things to distract you: who else is
in the church, whether the other people notice that you have come, the pictures
on the wall, the sermon, how much money you should give” (2). At the heart of
these observations are the differences between our cultures, not religious beliefs: Lame Deer idealizes simplicity, not
complexity. The often-time needless
complications the white man’s culture has forced on his religion have not gone
unnoticed by outsiders, like the Native Americans. This again, should humble and remind us to
listen before speaking.

Images from John Lame Deer's Memorial Service held in 2004. You were a great Man John! | Source

John's Family's Website

This complication of
religious service and ritual contrasts a Native American spirituality which
stresses that, “being a medicine man, more than anything else, is a state of
mind, a way of looking at and understanding this earth, a sense of what it is
all about” (147). There is no mention of ritual, or specific location
here. Whereas “White people pay a
preacher to be ‘good,’ to behave himself in public, to wear a collar, to keep
away from a certain kind of woman…the [medicine man] just acts like himself”
(146). Though not every Christian Church follows the guidelines Lame Deer
mentions here, there is still truth to what he says. If this were not so, there would not be massive
scandals in the church, etc. These
statements reveal Lame Deer’s bitterness towards the “white man” his people
have learned consider them hardly more than savage, but they also reflect the
hypocrisy readily apparent and lamented by so many others in modern day
Americanized Christianity. Again, the most insightful aspect of the way Native
Americans see these differences is their ability to see past the hypocrisy and
complexities to the underlying similarities that lie at the heart of religions
of all serious minded people. Surely there is a lesson for us there, and surely
the people who teach us such lessons are more than savages.

The
differences in spirituality between Native Americans and mainstream American
Culture find themselves rooted in one of the most significant fundamental
differences between the two cultures, “Indians chase the vision, white men
chase the dollar,” (35). “In our attitude towards [money] lies the biggest
difference between Indians and whites,” (31). A logistical extension of the
Native American concepts we have examined thus far is a central concept of
kinship with all living things. This same thing cannot be said about mainstream
American Culture. “For a white man each blade of grass or spring of water has a
price tag on it,” (32). Lame Deer maintains that the economic world of the
dollar, or “The Green Frog Skin,” is a world that imprisons men (31). The
results are as numerous as the problems seen on any nightly news program. Lame
Deer’s words ring ominously more and more familiar as technology and world
economy evolve: “Artists are the Indians of the white world. They are called
dreamers…people who don’t want to face ‘reality.’ …How the hell do these
frog-skin people know what reality is? The world in which you paint a picture
in your mind…different from what your eyes see…that is the real world, not the
Green Frog Skin Word. That’s only a bad dream, a streamlined, smog-filled
nightmare,” (33).

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To turn now, to economic concerns,
though they have never been far from our discussion, trying to understand a
culture that has such little need or desire for currency can be quite difficult
for someone with a European/American economic background. If we are obsessed
with anything, it is money. Once again,
if we examine how things began, in early encounters between our two cultures,
this difference over the esteem of financial power served to add an underlying
tension to an already poor state of affairs between settlers and Native Peoples
who were in conflict over resources, land, and any number of other issues at
all times. When Native Americans treated European Settlers “riches” as
meaningless, they were insulted back.
When they found bright and shiny objects that looked “wonderful” that
Europeans with their “superior science” found “common”, they were again, looked
down upon. Lame Deer relays some insults
he has heard about such as, “look at the dumb sons of bitches wasting all that
dough” (32). The fact of the matter was that Native Americans had built and
entire way of life that didn’t involve money, or the complications of it. White settlers did not understand that trying
to “improve” this culture by “civilizing” it with a religion full of ceremonies
and economic system based upon the supreme value of the dollar would require
the destruction of a way of life for whole nations of people. The well meaning “conversions” of Native
Americans by early missionaries not only killed many with diseases, but
destroyed the entire way of life, culture, and understanding. This is not a
fault of Christianity, it was a fault of the European settler’s inflated
opinions of themselves and their understanding of what other people
needed.

The
economic assimilation America’s booming population and economy demanded of the
Native American’s and their land would similarly destroy their way of life by
removing what traces they had of their own identity and their ability to
preserve what they had once valued. The European Settlers were not evil men who
set out to steal a land and murder its inhabitants and their culture. They simply had no experience with cultures and
religions so different from the mercantile system that had first brought them
to the New World. They, in their limited
understanding, had no clue that there could even be a place so different, nor
did they understand just how devastating their point of view might be if they
didn’t re-examine it based upon new information they encountered. Their great crime was of pride and assumption,
yet Lame Deer, and many Natives like him, have seen past this fault.

Other Books on Native American Culture

The book, Lame Deer Seeker of Vision, goes much deeper into specific aspects
of Native American religious ceremony and traditional life than we have touched
on here. I did want to mention that in
case you wanted to know more about it. It also chronicles some amazing
“wild-west” adventures of a true Lakota cowboy, if there is such a thing.
Ultimately though, I feel the book’s biggest contribution is the fact that it
voices the cry of a Native Culture that has been so mistreated and
misunderstood by mainstream American culture. The voice of Lame Deer is not one
of bitterness, though one may well justify such bitterness if it were so. The
voice of Lame Deer is not simplistic, ignorant, or lazy as Natives have been
accused of being. Rather, his voice is clear, powerful, and wise. This, I
believe, is a true representation of his people, his spirituality, and the
uniqueness of the culture that has survived despite the white man’s best
efforts to annihilate and/or assimilate it. The book is invaluable in this
service and should be read by anyone seeking accurate, true depictions of the
complicated and unique relationship between Native Americans and the white man.

As
for the issue of the relationship between the two cultures, sadly, now it is
almost an academic exercise. There are very
few Native Americans left compared to their once great numbers, and in many
cases, their great oral traditions have been lost as have their traditional
homelands. We live in the land of the
free and home of the brave, but we walk about on land that, in many ways, our
forefathers took. We talk about “getting
back to what this country was founded on”.
I think we need to talk a little more honestly about where we have come from
and the mistakes we made back then. We
do not need to move backwards, we need to move forwards while remembering the
past. We have to confront what we, as
descendents of European Americans, actually are the inheritors of. If we are ever to become better, we must
first ask ourselves, who are we truly, and where have we come from? Lame
Deer, Seeker of Vision is an invaluable tool for the 21st
century American concerned with this task.

Comments

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Kenneth Avery

3 years agofrom Hamilton, Alabama

cdub77 . . .

This was one fantastic read! Loved every word. I voted Up + all of the choices. Your graphics usage was superb. I like hubs like this. I urge you to keep up the great work and may you have a world of success on HubPages.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Avery

Your Friend for Life

Maree Michael Martin

6 years agofrom Northwest Washington on an Island

I am learning that to find the books I am supposed to read next, all I have to do is search our wonderful Hub Pages! This is totally awesome. Thank you so much for this wonderful review of Lame Deer. Just the information I was looking for, thanks. Voted up and shared. So much to learn, so exciting.

Carolyn Augustine

7 years agofrom Iowa

I think this is an interesting article and you make some good points: Native Americans have a unique perspective that is far different than the mainstream culture of America. We can still learn from this different perspective. It is important to include this perspective in any study dealing with Native Americans in the United States. I'm glad you brought the book to our attention. I think Native Americans have a particular challenge in finding their place in American Society while remembering their heritage and honoring their traditions. Thanks for bringing this book to our attention!

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